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Richard Holbrooke
|birth_place = New York City, New York |religion = |party = Democrat |alma_mater = Brown University Princeton University }} Richard Charles Albert Holbrooke (born April 24, 1941), Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan under the Obama administration, is a top-ranking American diplomat, magazine editor, author, professor, Peace Corps official, and investment banker. He is also the only person to have held the Assistant Secretary of State position for two different regions of the world (Asia from 1977–1981, and Europe from 1994–1996). From 1993–1994, he was U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Although long well-known in diplomatic and journalistic circles, Holbrooke achieved great public prominence only when he brokered a peace agreement among the warring factions in Bosnia that led to the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords, in 1995. Holbrooke was a contender in the replacement of Warren Christopher but ultimately lost to Madeleine Albright in 1997 when Bill Clinton chose a replacement for the Secretary of State. From 1999–2001, Holbrooke served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. He was an advisor to the Presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry in 2004. Holbrooke then joined the Presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and became a top foreign policy adviser; Holbrooke was considered a candidate for Secretary of State in a Clinton or Barack Obama administration. On January 22, 2009, Holbrooke was appointed as a special adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan, working under President of the United States Barack Obama and United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Public service Vietnam (1962–1969) In 1962, Holbrooke graduated from Brown University, where he was inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s call to service to enter government work. He was also influenced by the guidance of Secretary of State Dean Rusk, whose son, David, was Holbrooke’s closest friend at Scarsdale High School. A few weeks after college graduation, Holbrooke entered the Foreign Service. A year later, after Vietnamese language training, he began six years of service in and on Vietnam. He served first in the Mekong Delta, as a civilian representative for the Agency for International Development working on the rural Pacification Program. This involved supporting the South Vietnam government with economic development and enacting local political reforms. Holbrooke then moved to the embassy in Saigon where he became a staff assistant to Ambassadors Maxwell Taylor and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.. During this time, he served with many other young diplomats who would play a major role in American foreign policy in the decades ahead, including John Negroponte, Anthony Lake, Frank G. Wisner, Les Aspin, and Peter Tarnoff. As the conflict in Vietnam escalated, President Lyndon Johnson formed a team of Vietnam experts to work in the White House under the former head of the Phoenix Program, R.W. Komer, in an operation that was separate from the National Security Council. As a rising young diplomat with significant experience in the country, Holbrooke was asked to join the group when he was only twenty-four years old. Following his time in the White House, Holbrooke served as a special assistant to Under Secretaries of State (then the number-two position in the State Department) Nicholas Katzenbach and Elliot Richardson. In 1968, Holbrooke was asked to be part of the American delegation to the 1968 Paris peace talks, which was led by former New York Governor Averell Harriman and Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance. He also drafted a volume of the now famous Pentagon Papers, a top-secret report on the government’s decision-making in Vietnam. Following these assignments, Holbrooke spent a year as a mid-career fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. Morocco and foreign policy (1970–1976) In 1970, at his own request, Holbrooke was assigned to be the Peace Corps Director in Morocco. After two years, he left the Foreign Service to become the managing editor of the magazine [[Foreign Policy Magazine|''Foreign Policy]] from 1972–1976. At the same time, from 1974-1975, he was a consultant to the President’s Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy and was a contributing editor to ''Newsweek International''. Carter Administration (1977–1981) In the summer of 1976, Holbrooke left Foreign Policy to serve as campaign coordinator for national security affairs to Governor Jimmy Carter (D-GA) in his bid for the White House. During the campaign, Holbrooke helped Carter prepare for his foreign policy debates with President Gerald Ford. After Carter's victory, Holbrooke followed in the footsteps of such diplomatic mentors as Philip Habib, Dean Rusk, and Averell Harriman and, on March 31, 1977, became Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, making him the youngest person ever to hold that position, a post he held until 1981. While at State, he was a top adviser to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. During his service, he oversaw a warming with Cold War adversaries in the region, culminating in the normalization of relations with China in December 1978. He was also deeply involved in bringing hundreds of thousands of Indochinese refugees to the United States, thus beginning a lifelong involvement with the refugee issue. U.S. Ambassador to Germany In 1992, after Bill Clinton became President, Holbrooke was initially slated to be Ambassador to Japan due to his depth of knowledge and long experience in Asian affairs. However, this appointment eventually went to former Vice President Walter Mondale, and Holbrooke unexpectedly was appointed Ambassador to Germany.Holbrooke, Richard, (1999). - To End a War. - New York, New York: Random House. - p.55. In 1992, Holbrooke was also a member of the Carnegie Commission on America and a Changing World and Chairman and principal author of the bipartisan Commission on Government and Renewal, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation and the Peterson Institute. He was Chairman and principal author of the “Memo to the President-Elect: Harnessing Process to Purpose,” a blue-ribbon Commission report sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Institute for International Economics. Holbrooke served in Germany during a dramatic moment: only a few years after German reunification, he helped shape U.S. relations with a new Germany. A highlight of his tenure was President Bill Clinton’s visit to Berlin in July 1994, when thousands of Germans crammed the streets to welcome the American leader. While in Germany, Holbrooke also was a key figure in shaping the U.S. policy to promote NATO enlargement, as well as its approach to the war in Bosnia. In 1994, while serving as U.S. Ambassador to Germany, he conceived the idea of a cultural exchange center between the people of Berlin and Americans. With Richard von Weizsäcker, former President of Germany, and Henry A. Kissinger as co-Chairman, this institution – The American Academy in Berlin – was announced on September 9, 1994, the day after the famous U.S. Army Berlin Brigade left Berlin. The American Academy in Berlin opened three years later in a villa on the Wannsee once owned by the German-Jewish banker Hans Arnhold. When Holbrooke left the U.S. government in 2001, he became Chairman of The American Academy in Berlin. It is now one of the most important links between Germany and the United States. Its Fellows have included writers (from Pulitzer Prize winners Arthur Miller to Jeffrey Eugenides), economists, government officials, and public policy experts such as Dennis Ross and J. Stapleton Roy(former U.S. Ambassador to China). In 2008, The American Academy in Berlin awarded its annual Henry A. Kissinger Award for Transatlantic Relations to George H. W. Bush. In 2007, the Award’s first recipient was former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Balkan envoy In 1994, Holbrooke returned to Washington to become the assistant secretary for European and Canadian Affairs, a position he held until 1996, when he resigned for personal reasons (he had recently married the author Kati Marton and wished to return to New York). While assistant secretary, Holbrooke led the effort to implement the policy to enlarge NATO and had the distinction of leading the negotiation team charged with resolving the Balkans crisis. In 1995, he was the chief architect of the Dayton Peace Accords. In 1996, he was awarded the Manfred Wörner Medal, awarded by the German Ministry of Defense for public figures who have rendered "special meritorious service to peace and freedom in Europe." Upon leaving the State Department, Holbrooke was asked by President Clinton to become, as a private citizen, a special envoy to the Balkans given his distinguished service in the region. Holbrooke left his post as assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs and joined Credit Suisse First Boston, eventually taking the position of Vice Chairman. In 1997, Holbrooke became a special envoy to Cyprus and the Balkans on a pro-bono basis as a private citizen. During 1998 and 1999, in his capacity as special presidential envoy, Holbrooke worked to end the conflict between the armed forces of Serbia and the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), who were fighting for an independent Kosovo. In March 1999 he traveled to Belgrade to deliver the final ultimatum to Serb leader Slobodan Milošević before the NATO bombing campaign began. Holbrooke has written numerous articles about his experiences in the Balkans, and in 1998, published the widely-acclaimed book, ''To End a War, a memoir of his time as the chief negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, ending the Bosnian civil war. The New York Times ranked the book as one of the eleven best books of the year in 1998. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations In August 1999, Holbrooke was sworn-in as the 22nd U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, replacing Bill Richardson. During his tenure, Holbrooke was known for innovation and for achieving diplomatic breakthroughs that settled a series of longstanding tensions in the United States' relationship with the UN. His highest-profile accomplishment was negotiating a historic deal between the United States and the UN's then 188-Member States to settle the bulk of arrears owed by the United States to the United Nations. The deal, achieved with the agreement of the UN's entire membership in late December 2000, lowered the rate of UN dues paid by the United States to the UN, fulfilling the terms of a US law championed by Senators Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Joseph Biden (D-DE). In return for the reduction, the US paid the UN over $900 million in back dues. Holbrooke secured a reduction in US dues to the UN despite a booming American economy by enfolding the US position within a broad push to update the UN's long-outdated financial system. As negotiations reached a critical phase in the fall of 2000, Holbrooke bridged a gap between what the US was legally permitted to pay and the amounts the rest of the UN membership were willing to shoulder by securing an unprecedented contribution by billionaire Ted Turner, founder of the UN Foundation. Holbrooke and his team received a standing ovation in the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the terms of the deal were presented. Holbrooke's other achievements as UN Ambassador included getting the United Nations Security Council to debate and pass a resolution on HIV/AIDS, the first time that body had treated public health as a matter of global security. In January 2000, Holbrooke used the United States' presidency of the UN Security Council to spotlight a series of crises in Africa, holding six consecutive UN debates that brought together leaders from the region and the across the globe, including former South African President Nelson Mandela and then U.S. Vice President Al Gore, to catalyze more effective UN interventions in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and elsewhere. Holbrooke decried a "double standard" whereby African conflicts received insufficient global attention. In 2000, Holbrooke led a UN Security Council delegation in a series of diplomatic negotiations throughout Africa, including to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and Uganda. Holbrooke also secured membership for Israel in the UN's Western European and Others regional group, ending Israel's historic exclusion from regional group deliberations and allowing it to, for the first time, stand for election to leadership positions in UN sub-bodies.Press Release: Israel Accepted to WEOG An Achievement for Israeli Diplomacy. - Ministry of Foreign Affairs. - The State of Israel. - May 28, 2000. During the final weeks of his term, Holbrooke secured consultative status at the United Nations for Hadassah, the Jewish women's service organization, overcoming strenuous objections from certain Arab delegations. Business career, humanitarian work, and other activities Wall Street years (1981–1993) In January 1981, Holbrooke left government and became both senior advisor to Lehman Brothers and vice president of Public Strategies, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm he formed with James A. Johnson, a former top aide to Walter Mondale. From 1985 until 1993, Holbrooke served as managing director of Lehman Brothers. During this time, he co-authored Counsel to the President, The New York Times best-selling memoirs of legendary Democratic wise man and Defense Secretary Clark Clifford, published in 1991. He was a top policy adviser to then-Senator Al Gore (D-TN) during his 1988 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. And four years later he advised another southern governor, Bill Clinton, in his quest for the White House. Holbrooke also remained deeply engaged in prominent foreign policy issues. He visited Bosnia twice in 1992 as a private citizen and a member of the board of Refugees International, witnessing firsthand the damage and devastating human costs of the conflict. This experience committed Holbrooke to pursuing a more aggressive policy in Balkans, and drafting a memo to his colleagues, he urged that "Bosnia will be the key test of American policy in Europe. We must therefore succeed in whatever we attempt."Holbrooke. - To End a War. - p.50. Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria In January 2000, when the United States was in the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, Ambassador Holbrooke held an unprecedented meeting of the Security Council to discuss AIDS in Africa.Global Business Coalition: Strategy Page. No Security Council session in the history of the UN had ever been devoted to a health issue prior to this historic meeting. Vice President Al Gore presided over the Security Council and declared that AIDS was a security threat to all nations.Al Gore Support Center Accomplishments Archive Upon leaving the UN a year later, Holbrooke took over a nearly moribund NGO that was intended to mobilize businesses and corporations in the fight against AIDS. At the time, it had 17 members. Over the next six years, Holbrooke turned this organization – originally called the Global Business Council on HIV/AIDS – into a worldwide organization with over 225 members.Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria: "A Growing Business Movement". It expanded to include malaria and tuberculosis and is now known as the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. It is now the official focal point for mobilizing the business community in support of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and has grown into an important part of the ongoing war against these three diseases.Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria: "New Group to Galvanize Business Role in Combating AIDS, TB and Malaria". Other activities Holbrooke was the vice chairman of Perseus LLC, a leading private equity firm. From February 2001 until July 2008, Holbrooke was a member of the Board of Directors of the now almost bankrupt American International Group. During his time as a member of the board of directors of AIG the firm engaged in wildly speculative credit default insurance schemes that may cost the taxpayer hundreds of billions to prevent AIG from bringing down the entire financial system. He is a member of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and formerly served on the Advisory Board of the National Security Network. He is also a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Citizens Committee for New York City, and the Economic Club of New York. He is the Founding Chairman of the American Academy in Berlin; President and CEO of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria, the business alliance against HIV/AIDS, until his appointment as a special envoy by President Barack Obama.Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria: "GBC President and CEO Richard Holbrooke Heading to State Department".; and Chairman of the Asia Society. Other board memberships include the American Museum of Natural History, Malaria No More (a New York-based nonprofit that was launched at the 2006 White House Summit with the goal of ending all deaths caused by malaria), Partnership for a Secure America, and the National Endowment for Democracy. He is also an honorary trustee of the Dayton International Peace Museum, as well as professor-at-large at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, his alma mater. Additionally, Holbrooke is an Advisory Board member for the Partnership for a Secure America, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy. He has also served as vice chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston, managing director of Lehman Brothers,Council on Foreign Relations - Richard Holbrooke managing editor of Foreign Policy, and director of the Peace Corps in Morocco. He has written numerous articles and two books: To End A War, and the co-author of Counsel to the President, and one volume of The Pentagon Papers. He has received more than a dozen honorary degrees, including an LL.D. from Bates College in 1999. As of 2005, he writes a monthly column for The Washington Post. On March 20, 2007 he appeared on The Colbert Report to mediate in what Stephen Colbert (or rather, his television alter-ego) saw as Willie Nelson infringing on his ice cream flavor time. Holbrooke was the 'ambassador on call' and after a short mediation process the two parties agreed to taste each other's Ben and Jerry's ice cream to make amends. He subsequently sang "On the Road Again" in a trio with Colbert and Nelson. Position on Iraq In January 2001, Holbrooke said that "Iraq will be one of the major issues facing the incoming Bush administration at the United Nations." Further, "Saddam Hussein's activities continue to be unacceptable and, in my view, dangerous to the region and, indeed, to the world, not only because he possesses the potential for weapons of mass destruction but because of the very nature of his regime. His willingness to be cruel internally is not unique in the world, but the combination of that and his willingness to export his problems makes him a clear and present danger at all times." On February 24, 2007 Holbrooke delivered the Democratic Party's weekly radio address and called for "a new strategy in Iraq", involving "a careful, phased redeployment of U.S. troops" and a "new diplomatic offensive in the Gulf region to help stabilize Iraq." Controversies Lawrence controversy While Holbrooke's nomination to be U.N. ambassador was pending before the United States Senate and State Department investigators were scrutinizing his financial disclosures, he disclosed that he had lived rent free in then U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland, M. Larry Lawrence's Washington residence for a year in 1996. Lawrence was a controversial figure; a Congressional investigation found that contrary to Lawrence's claims, he never served in the United States merchant marine or was wounded in a torpedo attack on a ship in World War II and should not have been given permission to be buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Holbrooke had previously written a letter of recommendation supporting Lawrence in his request for a waiver allowing him to be interred in the cemetery. Karadžić controversy According to Radovan Karadžić and Muhamed Sacirbey, ex-Bosnian Foreign Minister, Holbrooke signed an agreement with Karadžić that if the latter withdrew from politics he would not be sent to the Hague tribunal. Holbrooke denied these terms, saying Karadžić's statement was "a flat-out lie", despite Karadžić's counsel, Peter Robinson, claiming that he had fifteen witnesses to the conversation held in Belgrade on 18-19 July, 1996. . —"Karadzic declines to enter plea as trial opens". - Deutsche Presse-Agentur. - July 31, 2008. Personal life Holbrooke was born on April 24, 1941, in New York City, to Dan Holbrooke and Trudi Moos (née Kearl).Sciolino, Elaine. - “Man in the News -- Richard C. Holbrooke; A Tough Man (Some Say Brutal) for a Tough Job”. - The New York Times. - June 19, 1998. Holbrooke’s mother, whose Jewish family fled Hamburg in 1933 for Buenos Aires before coming to New York, took him to Quaker meetings on Sundays. “I was an atheist, his father was an atheist,” says his mother, a potter now married to a sculptor. “We never thought of giving Richard a Jewish upbringing. The Quaker meetings seemed interesting.” Holbrooke’s father, a doctor born of Russian Jewish parents in Warsaw, died of cancer. His father changed his name to Holbrooke when he arrived in the United States in the 1930’s. Such, however, is the family’s loss of contact with its roots that his original name is unknown. After Scarsdale High School Holbrooke received his A.B. from Brown University in 1962 and completed a post-graduate fellowship at Princeton University in 1970. He married Kati Marton, an author and journalist in 1995. It is his third marriage. His marriage to Marton has led him to look more closely at his past. She was born into a family of Hungarian Jews but raised a Roman Catholic. In researching a book about Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat in Budapest who saved Jews during World War II, Marton traveled to her native Hungary whence she and her parents had fled the Communists in the 1950s. It was there that an old friend of her mother’s told her that Wallenberg had come too late for Marton’s grandparents. It was the first she had heard about her Jewish roots. Like Madeleine Albright’s parents, Marton’s family hid their Jewish identity when they came to the United States. She learned that one of her maternal grandparents had died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. She and Holbrooke are not religious, but have explored their Jewish identity together. They visited Budapest’s main synagogue together. Chronology *1962 - Graduates from Brown University where he was editor-in-chief of the Brown Daily Herald; enters U.S. Foreign Service *1963-1966 - Vietnam: diplomatic service as a provincial representative for the Agency for International Development (AID), then staff assistant to Ambassadors Maxwell Taylor and Henry Cabot Lodge. *1966-1968 - White House: Vietnam staff of President Lyndon Johnson *1967-1969 - Special assistant to Under Secretaries of State Nicholas Katzenbach and Elliot Richardson; writes one volume of the Pentagon Papers for Pentagon at same time *1968-1969 - Member of the American Delegation to the Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam *1969-1970 - Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University *1970-1972 - Peace Corps: Director in Morocco *1972 - Takes leave of absence (without pay) from Foreign Service in order to be Managing Editor of Foreign Policy Magazine (1972-1977) *1974-1975 - Consultant to the President's Commission on the Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy *1974-1975 - Contributing editor of Newsweek magazine *1976 - Co-ordinates National Security Affairs for the Carter presidential campaign. *1977-1981 - Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (as the U.S. switches full diplomatic relations to the People's Republic of China from the Republic of China-Taiwan) *1981 - A consultant at Lehman Brothers, eventually becoming full-time Managing Director (1985) *1992 - Member of the Carnegie Commission on America and a Changing World *1992 - Chairman and principal author of the bipartisan Commission on Government and Renewal, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation and the Peterson Institute (formerly the Institute for International Economics) *1993-1994 - U.S. Ambassador to Germany *1994-1996 - Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs *1995 - Leads the American team negotiating the Bosnian Peace Accords at Dayton *1996 - Awarded the Manfred Wörner Medal *1996 - Founding Chairman, American Academy in Berlin; resumed Chairmanship after leaving UN in 2001 *1997 - President Bill Clinton's special envoy to Cyprus and Kosovo on a pro-bono basis while a Vice-Chairman of Credit Suisse First Boston CSFB *1999-2001 - U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations *2001 - Counselor at the Council on Foreign Relations; chairman of its Terrorism Task Force. *2001-2004 - Appointed director of Rockville, Maryland, company Human Genome Sciences, Inc (Nasdaq: HGSI) *2001 - President & CEO, Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria *2002 - Awarded Grand Cross of the Order of Merit (Germany) *2002 - Chairman of the Asia Society. *2009 - Present - US Envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan (appointed by Barack Obama) Bibliography *1991: Clifford, Clark, with Richard Holbrooke. - Counsel to the President: A Memoir. - New York, New York: Random House. - ISBN 9780394569956. *1998: To End a War. - New York, New York: Random House. - ISBN 9780375500572. References External links *Council on Foreign Relations: Biographical information *Bulldozer of the Balkans *Interview with Richard Holbrooke by Nermeen Shaikh at Asia Society. *Speech to an Asia Society Gala function On the occasion of the Society's 50th anniversary in 2006. Category:1941 births Category:Living people Category:Ambassadors of the United States Category:American businesspeople Category:American International Group Category:American Jews Category:American people of the Vietnam War Category:Brown University alumni Category:Clinton administration controversies Category:Council on Foreign Relations Category:Quebecor Inc. Category:Permanent Representatives of the United States to the United Nations Category:People from Scarsdale, New York Category:Presidents of the United Nations Security Council bs:Richard Holbrooke da:Richard Holbrooke de:Richard Holbrooke fr:Richard Holbrooke it:Richard Holbrooke he:ריצ'רד הולברוק nl:Richard Holbrooke no:Richard Holbrooke pl:Richard Holbrooke sq:Richard Holbrooke sr:Ричард Холбрук sv:Richard Holbrooke